i had wanted to document these days better. they are the last ones and i don't want to forget...
i don't want to forget how different this act of carrying has been,
how much more emotional and pain-full and how so very aware i have become of each movement, each flutter...
the heaviness that has begun.
and lyla, the first one i carried through the dark of advent days, she stands in front of me in the late of this evening and asks me to come and sit with her before she sleeps.
i lay my head on the pillow next to hers and we talk.
about nothing and about everything and i remember, and maybe it's because my dark is filled again with the movements of a sweet baby girl, but i remember so strongly that first christmas where i began to understand
the agony of waiting...
the beauty of waiting...
the desperate wanting for the waiting to end...
she says it with a wonder in her eyes, this will be my sixth christmas! and as it sinks in, she fingers the edging on the sweater i'm wearing.
mama, why are you wearing this sweater?
~ because i was cold, baby girl.
where did you get your sweater?
~ it was a christmas gift from your daddy...3 years ago now.
i was three, wasn't i?
and it all comes flooding back, that christmas morning where we all sat together - before everything shattered and he was still here...
and this sweater i pulled from my closet in the chill of this morning, it comes from a time when so much was still whole.
and his son, the one who has captured my heart so completely, he pulls me close in the quiet of this evening and we don't have to say anything...he just sits and he holds me as he listens to the song i can't seem to let go of....
and maybe that is why i've been holding on so tightly to the tradition of advent this season, why as it comes closer to the coming of my own baby girl, i so desperately look to the fulfillment of His.
because He came. entered into our messy and the mixed up and the this-isn't-how-it-was-supposed-to turn-out world. He wrapped Himself up in the womb of a woman and put on this skin that kept Him bound and tied to us...
and there is so much beauty wrapped around the ache...
He came. and even if everyone and everything else all falls apart and walks away...He is here. here and so very present with us.
this is my thirty-third christmas, my fourth little one nestled in my deep...this life of mine that has been planned out before i even existed, His Hand has been on me throughout all of my days.
yes, He is here.
and there is so much joy wrapped around all that i've been given and all that's been taken away...
and tonight, i can rest in that.
